... to Belem, Brazil ...

... a busy city of 1.8 million people, about 60 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, up the Amazon River. It was a bit grittier than expected for Brazil, but boasts a fine cathedral in gleaming white, quite a contrast from the rest of Belem.

We took a tender from our ship to the port (30 minutes), then a bus to the heart of Belem (1 hour), and walked around the busy local market selling mostly a wide variety of fruit and seafood. We headed back to the port by bus (1 hour), to hop on our tour bus for a ride right back into the city (1 hour), and were dropped off at exactly the same spot as before. !!! This time we boarded a boat for a trip up the Amazon, leaving Belem behind for the more rural rain forested areas. Along the way we saw the Amazonian version of Perkasie Park's cottages.

We left the boat for a walk through the jungle, with our guide, Pedro, pointing out the indigenous trees and fruits along the way. We saw Brazil nut trees, with empty nut pods strewn on the ground. Weighing a pound or more, they're a lethal bomb when dropped from a tree. We stopped for a jungle feast of fruit; ordinarily we would have passed because the main thing not to eat when you're in a strange place is fresh fruit - but it was now almost 5 pm and we hadn't eaten since breakfast, so ... we sampled everything, washing it down with the local 57% alchohol beverage (it must have killed anything else because we had no ill effects of any kind).

We boarded the boat for the cruise to downtown, followed by the 1 hour bus ride, this time through rush hour traffic, complicated by a torrential downpour which snarled traffic further. Last tender to the ship was at 5:30; we didn't reach the port until 6:30, and waited until 6:45 for a local ferry to unblock the tender boarding area. We reboarded the Amsterdam at 7:15, with the ship waiting for our tour group before it could depart.